


gentle and low

by jakia



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, hint of spiciness but mostly fluff, sugar syrupy fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22086694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jakia/pseuds/jakia
Summary: Elves trance for four hours; humans sleep for eight. Caleb and Essek have different sleeping requirements. 5 moments of Caleb and Essek sleeping together (literally). Shadowgast.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 39
Kudos: 578





	gentle and low

**Author's Note:**

> Props to the Essek fan discord for being the greatest holiday gift and constant source of inspiration.
> 
> Section 3 is the part with a little bit of spice/smut in it. I don't think it's enough to give it a M or E rating, but if you think otherwise, let me know and I'll change it.

**1.**

It has been a long day.

Caleb is drained; Essek is certain of it. His eyes are weary, and his hair is no longer neatly tied back, but has been let loose as a wild mane of messy red curls. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he is struggling to keep standing.

Then again, anyone would be after three days without rest, depleted of their spells and denied even a short rest for so long. But that had been the favor they agreed upon; Essek needed to know how long a human could last, especially since this war seemed bound to continue, and Caleb had volunteered as a test subject, a repayment of a favor owed. 

In his notes to the Bright Queen, Essek will write that the biggest thing they have to fear from the Empire mages is their  _ tenacity _ , their sheer stubbornness of will. If  _ Caleb _ refused to give up for three days just for an experiment, then how long will a Scourager last, protecting state secrets?

Still, enough is enough. It would not do to have his ally dead or injured, as any further exhaustion might lead to. 

“Enough,” Essek says, breaking the silence and Caleb’s concentration. “Enough, Caleb. You can stop.”

He doesn’t drop immediately. “Are you sure?” He asks, his accent thicker than normal, as if speaking Common is a struggle right now. “I can keep going.”

Essek places a hand on Caleb’s shoulder, feeling the tightness of the muscle underneath. His heart is  _ pounding _ , and his breathing is heavy. He’s incredibly tense. “I will not have you torture yourself for my sake. I have learned enough.”

That seems to settle the human; his spell fades as he slopes immediately, his muscles relaxing as his body collapses in a chair. His breathing is deep and labored, but he looks up to Essek with a spark in his eye. “I, ah, hope that was a good start to repaying you, Essek.”

It was more than enough, he thinks but doesn’t say; best not let it go to his head, though, less the Nein start having him teleporting them to God knows where. He squeezes Caleb’s shoulder instead. “You can stay here and rest, if you’d like.”

They are at Essek’s house instead of the Xhorhaus, both for privacy and convenience. Most of the Nein would not have appreciated Essek’s little experiment, he thinks, and being here instead has allowed Essek to multitask in a way he wouldn’t have been able to with seven other foreign agents around.

“Danke sehr aufmerksam--I do not know that I have it in me to walk home.”

Essek could teleport him, of course, but it is late at night, and that seems like a waste of resources. Besides, he has a perfectly good guest room that Caleb can sleep in. For all Essek knows, Caleb may find the relative quiet of Essek’s home refreshing, compared to the chaos that normally erupts around the Xhorhaus. 

He offers his arm to Caleb and helps pull the human up so that he can stand again. It’s difficult for the human to walk on his own, his exhaustion seeping deep into his bones, so Essek offers him a shoulder, and half carries the human down the hall to the guest room. By the time they reach the end of the hallway, Caleb is ready to collapse, and so Essek expends some of his gravitational energy to carry him the rest of the way.

He is dirty; a bath would have been nice in Essek’s opinion, but the human’s snores are already softly going before the drow can think to offer. Prestidigitation is an easy enough cantrip, though, and one Essek thinks Caleb will appreciate. The Luxon knows he would not have wanted to wake up filthy in a stranger’s bed.

...It’s odd, watching him sleep. He’s never actually seen anyone  _ sleep  _ before. There are races in the Dynasty that do require sleep, of course, goblins and bugbears and half-orcs, among others, but he’s never had the opportunity to observe it in person. As an elf, he trances instead of sleep. A trance is light, though; he’s still aware of his surroundings, still aware of other people around him. If someone were to cast on him--even something as simple as a cantrip--while he tranced, he would know it and respond, disrupting his meditation.

Caleb continues to sleep undisturbed by the spell, however. Essek might as well not even be in the room.

Strange. It would be rather easy for an enemy to kill him at this moment, vulnerable as he is right now. The thought disturbs him greatly, so much so that he spends more time than he intends just standing there, watching Caleb sleep.

There is something attractive about the human that Essek can’t explain. He should be strange and forign, funny looking, not alluring, and yet Essek cannot help but watch him. Ever since they first met, he hasn’t been able to keep his eyes off of him. He thinks it might be the hair--it’s vibrant and red and draws all of his attention. There are not a lot of people in Rosohna with hair like that, and he’s the Shadowhand: he’s trained the notice the differences. But that’s not quite true, either, because Essek finds himself staring at the blue of his eyes as often as he can. And there’s no excuse for that one, at least not one that is reasonable, at least.

( _ Oh yes your Majesty, I  _ **_did_ ** _ keep a human locked up in my house for three days for an experiment. No, he’s not hurt--he volunteered. Why did I pick him instead of one of the other potential spies or traitors? Why, I think he’s the prettiest. _ \-- that would go over well with the Bright Queen, he’s sure.)

The human’s breathing is different now that he’s asleep; it is gentle, and low. The sound his heart makes is simple and rhythmic: da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. It’s soothing in a way, a reminder that the human is alive still, even though his deep rest resembles a carticure of death.

He closes the door softly, careful as to not disturb him, and goes to write his report. 

(But not without first casting a protection spell on the room, just in case.)

* * *

**2.**

He wakes up warm, surrounded by body heat.

The thought jolts him awake; the last thing he remembers is the dragon’s tail slamming across his head, and then, darkness. But he’s alive now, certainly, breathing heavily, surrounded by warmth.

Above him, he sees snow falling gently on top of a dome; as he blinks to further consciousness he recognizes the spell as Leomund’s Tiny Hut, although it has been ages since he’s seen it cast. There are better spells that do the same thing, albeit at a higher level.

On his left shoulder is a familiar tousle of red hair; he’s found he’s become endeared to the color. His sleeping companion’s bright blue eyes are closed, and there are brown specks of darkened flesh across his nose that Essek’s hasn’t noticed before, but his heart beat is the same soothing sound as before; da-dum, da-dum.

Not how he often dreamed of finally waking up next to Caleb, certainly.

Less alluringly, he finds on his stomach to the right sleeps a familiar blue tiefling. At his feet, a familiar goblin. At his back, the surprising muscular of the half-orc.

Luxon, no wonder he was warm.

He doesn’t want to move and disturb them, but he feels sweat begin to crawl down the back of his neck. Now that he’s awake and out of his trance (and it has been  _ ages  _ since he last tranced that deeply), the warmth is unbearable.

“You can move ‘em if you want. They’ll go back to sleep.”

_ Beauregard. _ He lifts his head just slightly, and sees her form just on the edge of the inside of the dome, sitting up, keeping watch. The crystalline goggles cover her eyes completely, but there’s a gentle smirk on her face.

She’s right, of course. He pushes Jester off of his stomach gently, who merely rolls over on top of Caduceus instead, her snoring continuing. With delicate grace he moves Caleb’s head from his shoulder to Yasha’s, and manages to sit up completely straight. He stands precariously with the help of a gravity spell, and goes to move beside Beau, doing his best not to disturb the others from their rest.

“I take it we won?” He whispers, remembering the ancient white dragon that had swooped upon them unexpectedly, drawing Essek into a battle he hadn’t intended on fighting. 

“No,” Beau shoves at the snowy ground beneath her feet. “Fucker is still out there. It flew off and we were too tapped to chase it. Not to mention we were afraid of you bleeding out,” she pokes at his stomach where the dragon’s claws had rendered into him; it causes him to gasp, but the wound is healed, fully, and so the pain is minimal. “Glad you aren’t dead, by the way.”

He was rather glad of it, too. “I take it you decided to rest, then?”

“Oh yeah. Caleb insisted on it. He was freaking out  _ hard _ , man, even after Cad promised you were stable. He didn’t want to move you, just in case,” she smirks, turning back to look at Caleb’s form, snoring on top of Yasha now. “He’s got a bit of a crush, if you couldn’t tell.”

Caleb’s crush is entirely mutual, thank you, but he wasn’t going to tell Beauregard that. He hoped that with her darkvision goggles she couldn’t see the blush on his face. “Thank you for taking care of me,” he says instead, changing the subject. “It has been--a long time since I’ve been knocked out of a fight like that.”

“Dude, thanks for sticking around and helping! You totally could have just noped out of there, but instead you stayed and helped us! We appreciate that!”

Except that he couldn’t. He had been out of 7th level spells after teleporting them, and creating a circle took a minute he didn’t have with a white dragon breathing frost down his neck. 

He winces when she punches his shoulder. “You’re welcome,” he says, instead of explaining his spellwork.

“Anyway, if you need to skidaddle out of here, we understand. You didn’t sign up to adventure with us. You probably want to get back home, anyway.”

He did. No doubt there was a general sense of calamity in his household when he didn’t return home that evening. Even the Bright Queen and his coworkers might be worried, given that he left so suddenly. By all logical accounts, he should leave, now, to make up for any time that he’s lost.

Then Beau yawns, and he remembers suddenly that humans need eight hours of sleep, not four. A fact he’s come across more often in books than in practice, barring the one time Caleb slept for almost twelve hours in his guest room.

“You should get some rest,” he says instead, abandoning any plans he had made to teleport home. “I’ve slept for what I need. I can keep watch the rest of the night.”

“You sure?” She asks, yawning and stretching in the same motion. “I’m supposed to wake up Fjord in an hour for his turn.”

If he were a kinder soul, he’d wake them all up and summon Mordekein’s Magnificent Mansion, so that they could  _ really  _ rest. But 7th level spells can only go so far, and who knows what the day may bring. Perhaps he will need to fight another dragon before he finally returns to Rosohna? He hopes not. 

“Go and rest,” he reassures her. “You all kept me alive in that fight. It’s the least I can do.”

“You sure you aren’t needed at home?”

“The Dynasty will survive without me for at least eight hours, I’m sure.” Probably not much longer than that, though, if he’s being honest. It’s amazing the sheer amount of incompetency he’s surrounded by some days. 

Beau shrugs and stands, stretching to pop her back muscles as she does. The sound is bothersome, but it doesn’t seem to wake anyone around them. “I’ll let you, then. Far be it for me to look a gift horse in the mouth.” She yawns. She then goes and takes the spot where he slept before, collapsing on top of Jester with little fanfare, kicking Caleb closer to Yasha as she plops down. Neither of them wake up.

He stays up and keeps watch over the Mighty Nein, and wonders when he became so terribly fond of them.

* * *

**3.**

He wakes up because he hears Caleb snoring.

He didn’t mean to close his eyes--one moment, he and Caleb had been talking softly, trading wishes and admirations and secrets, and the next he was in his trance--but he certainly didn’t expect to hear the results of Caleb sleeping so soundly. 

Then again, they did have quite the workout, didn’t they?

He rolls onto his side and faces his lover (his lover, his lover, they were  _ lovers _ now, officially), admiring him one last time before he gets up to clean himself. He looks content, his breathing even, gentle and low, Essek’s favorite sound in the world. He lets himself lie there and admire him--the gentle curve of his jaw, the feel of stubble beneath his hands, foreign and strange and delightful, all at the same time. There’s a purple-blue swell in his neck from where Essek bit him with his fangs, and another on his shoulder, the contrast in tones beautiful. He wants to just lay here and watch him sleep, admiring him undeterred. But there is stickiness drying against his stomach, and he can still taste Caleb in his mouth.

He brushes a stray curl out of Caleb’s face, and then forces himself out of bed, down the hall to the bathroom.

He could prestidigitate himself clean, but why, when there’s a perfectly good bathtub down the hall? 

In the quietness of his private bathroom, he admires his reflection. There are bruises trailing down his neck and along the inside of his thighs, little specks of reddish-purple hue. His hair is a mess, sticking each and every way that it can--he needs a haircut, if he and Caleb are going to continue this--and the dried spent on his stomach contrasts nicely with the color of his skin.

It’s a good look on him. Pleasantly spent. Seems a shame to ruin it with a bath, really, but the thought of staying sticky and sore as opposed to warm and clean overrules him. 

He runs the water into the tub while he brushes his teeth, then warms it with a spell in the rocks underneath the tub. He slips in and lets the warmth overtakes him, relaxing his bones and muscles, healing a soreness he’d forgotten in his pursuit of pleasure.

He doesn’t know how long he stays in the bath, loose and love-drunk, but it’s long enough that he starts to hear footsteps down the hall, pointed ears twitching at the unexpected sound.

It  _ could  _ be an intruder, someone dangerous come to rob him. He should  _ probably _ get out of the bath and check, but it’s warm, and his oils smell nice, and he can’t be bothered.

But the more likely answer is that it’s Caleb, and that’s exactly who opens the door to the bathroom.

Caleb is beautifully naked still (and that’s a funny thought, that he walked down the hall of Essek’s home without any clothes on, where God or anyone else could see him), sleep-addled, watching Essek with a confused look on his face before it dawns on him, his eyes lighting up slightly.

“You don’t need to sleep,” he murmurs, walking towards the bath with Essek still in it. “ 'Swhy the bed was empty and cold.”

He kneels beside the bath, letting his hand slip into the bathwater. His hand grazes against Essek’s knee, but the touch is innocent, more interested in the warmth of the water than tantalizing anyone. 

That doesn’t mean Essek craves it any less.

“I do need sleep, actually,” Essek explains softly, placing a warm wet hand on Caleb’s cheek. “But less than you do.”

“Can I join you?” Caleb asks, his voice still sleep-addled. “ 'M sticky.”

His bathtub isn’t really built for two people, but that’s not going to stop them from trying. “Of course,” he offers, sitting up so that Caleb can get in in front of him. “Let me wash your hair.”

Caleb gets in, his back against Essek’s chest. It’s a little comical--without magic, Caleb is a good five inches taller than Essek--but he sinks into the water, his legs hanging out of the sides. If Essek’s tub isn’t built for two people, it certainly isn’t built for someone as tall as Caleb. The human doesn’t seem to mind much, leaning into the water, his head leaning against Essek’s chest with his eyes closed, perfectly content.

Essek laughs softly, running a wet, soapy hand against Caleb’s face. “Hard to wash your hair like that.”

Wordlessly, the human lifts his head and lets Essek wash his hair, running warm water through his hair, threading his fingers through the curls. While wet his hair is a more a dark copper color, but Essek finds he’s still terribly fond of it. He lathers his hair and runs soap hands down Caleb’s back, his shoulders, counting freckles, scars, bruises, committing his flesh to memory. 

While Essek washes him, Caleb keeps his eyes closed, and if it weren’t for his content little sighs he makes when Essek rubs over a sore spot, he would think the human was asleep.

“You aren’t allowed to fall asleep and drown in my bathtub,” Essek whispers, kissing the side of his head, then his cheek, his neck--

“Find a way to keep me awake, then,” Caleb winks at him, like he’s sharing some sort of secret. Essek’s breath catches in his throat when he kisses him deeply, sloshing water all over his bathroom floor.

...They do make it back to bed, eventually. And when Caleb falls asleep this time, Essek trances with him, solidly and deeply.

* * *

**4.**

He’s gotten into the habit of staying in bed with Caleb, even when he doesn’t need the sleep. A part of him feels it’s a waste of his talents--there is  _ so much _ he could accomplish in the four hours he lounges with Caleb instead--but a part of him that now speaks with Caleb’s voice tells him that relaxing for a few hours is just as important, given how busy he normally is during the day.

Besides. Caleb gets grumpy and cold if he leaves the bed while he’s still sleeping.

(Which is _insane_ , by the way, that Caleb could ever even get cold, given that the man is a  _ fucking furnace _ , most days. It was fine when they lived in Xhorhas and it’s naturally cooler climate, but  _ here?  _ He’s going to need a divorce so he can sleep well at night without burning up.)

(That’s a lie. He never wants a divorce. He’d rather deal with the heat than try to live without Caleb.)

So there’s a stack of books on their nightstand that is forever getting larger, in spite of the books he keeps finishing. Most of them are mystery novels, his personal favorite, although some of them are romance novels, at Jester’s recommendation. A few are on magical theory, and a few others are on teaching practices, although those are tucked away and hidden, and he doesn’t pull them out too often. They have a rule, he and Caleb, that neither of them are allowed to continue working at bedtime, mostly because their personalities tend to lead to overworking, and neither of them want to have that sort of life anymore. So he keeps his spellwork theory books signed  _ E. Widogast  _ tucked away in his desk, and his nightstand is full of an abundance of fiction. Very few, if any, have anything to do with work--a stark change from how his life used to be.

But then again, he is no longer the Shadowhand. 

No longer a Theylss, even. A lot can change in two years.

Like right now, he has a husband that snores gently beside him while he stays up and reads. 

If he’s being particularly honest, he should have been asleep a few hours ago, but this book has completely engrossed him. It’s a romance novel--a terrible, cheesy, smutty romance novel--and  _ normally _ he only skim reads those quickly and gives them back to Jester with a distasteful review, but this one catches his attention. Part of it is the subject matter--the protagonist is a drow like him, but he wields two swords and fights monsters for a living. And his lady love is a wild sorceress from a faraway land for whom he may be projecting on just a bit, but in his defense the book describes her as a redhead and he has a  _ weakness _ . He normally doesn’t read smut with girls in it at all, usually just skips over it and goes to the next bit, as it’s just not his type of thing, but he’s  _ invested _ in these characters, wants to know if the sorceress manages to kill her abusive father, wants to know if the drow ever reconnects with his lost people, wants to know if these two fire-and-water characters ever manage to make it work in the end.

Sooooo he stays up too late. And he reads the whole thing in a single sitting. And when he wakes up four hours later, much later than his normal wake up time, he wakes up to an empty bed, and the barest bit of sunlight peeking through their window shade. There’s a cat asleep on Caleb’s pillow, trying to capture any residual warmth, but otherwise his husband is nowhere to be found.

Caleb’s never gotten up before him before.

He stretches, dresses, and heads to the bathroom, wondering if he might find his husband there. Instead, he finds his husband in the kitchen, cooking breakfast and singing in Zemnian, a rare but welcomed sight. 

_ “Hallo _ , sleepyhead,” his husband teases, kissing him gently. He’s still getting used to the short hair and the full beard on Caleb, but it’s a good look on him, even if it’s different from the Caleb he originally fell in love with. The kisses are still sweet, though. “Enjoy your book too much last night?”

He groans, and sits down at the their kitchen table, flopping his head down on the table. “Remind me to kill Jester later, will you?”

“A bad ending?”

“A  _ cliffhanger _ ,” he complains as Caleb brings him a cup of coffee and a plate of something that smells delicious. “She read the damn book before she gave it to me--she could have at least  _ warned _ me!”

Caleb chuckles as he sits beside him, reaching over and squeezing his hand. At their feet, two of their five cats paw at each other, fighting over a discarded piece of string. “Good otherwise though?”

“Amazing. Dreadful. Both in equal measure,” he stares at the love of his life as he takes another sip of coffee. “You’d hate it.”

Caleb doesn’t look up from his newspaper. “You want me to read it anyway, though, don’t you?”

“YES,” he groans, scratching at his head. “I need to talk to  _ someone _ about it, and Jester is who knows where!”

He could cast  _ Sending _ and bother her (and likely will later anyway) but he’d like to talk to Caleb about the book, too.

“Add it to the pile. I’ll read it tonight if I can,” Caleb smirks, turning the page of his newspaper. At his feet, their kitten Brotchen plays with his bare feet like his toes are enemies to be conquered.

He gets halfway through his cup of coffee before he realizes the day and the time. “Shouldn’t you be teaching a class right now?” He asks, curious. It’s not often that they get to spend the morning together like this--normally, it’s the opposite. Essek wakes up first, makes a breakfast that Caleb scarfs down as he runs out the door to teach his morning class. He’ll get home around noon, and they’ll have lunch together before they both leave to teach. Caleb will get home earlier and cook dinner while Essek teaches an additional evening course, and then they spend their evenings together. The fact that Caleb hasn’t left already is strange.

“Oh, I’m terribly sick,” Caleb coughs fakely, putting his paper down while Essek rolls his eyes at him. “I had to cancel.”

“Uh-huh. You seem terrible,” he casts  _ Mage Hand _ to bring the coffee pot closer to him to pour a refill. 

“It’s awful. You see, I woke up before my husband, who  _ always _ wakes up before me, and he looked so beautiful sleeping there that I had to cancel my class just to spend the morning with him,” he leans over and kisses Essek with a loud smack. 

“Sound like an awful illness you’ve caught there.”

“I hear it’s contagious,” he kisses him again, and again, tasting of coffee and warm bread. “You should be careful. You may catch it.”

“You are just trying to get me to cancel my classes, too.” 

Caleb kisses down his neck. “Is it working?”

It is.

* * *

**5.**

Human babies are needy things.

They can’t possibly keep her; neither of them want kids, really, and they aren’t very well suited to parenthood, given their backgrounds. Which is a shame, really, because Caleb is very good with kids--he sits in a room with a bunch of twelve year olds and shows them how to cast  _ dancing lights  _ like it was what he was made to do-- and would make an excellent father, in Essek’s opinion; it’s Essek who has all the faults when it comes to being a parent. There is a reason Caleb teaches children and Essek teaches adults who want to learn magic.

They suspect that someone dropped the human infant off on their doorstep because, as two well-known mages and founders of a magical school, they’d have the resources to see that she’d get taken care off. Whoever dropped her off was right, of course, but it’s still awfully inconvenient.

Especially since she keeps crying throughout the night, and Caleb needs to sleep. 

Which means Essek is on baby duty, every time she starts to cry. 

“Shh, lovely,” he tells her, and she stops crying immediately, calming down and gurgling at him instead, needing attention. Are all humans so easily distracted, he wonders? Do elvish children sleep more, or less? Because to him it doesn’t feel like human babies sleep  _ at all _ , and humans are supposed to sleep a lot more he thought?

(His sister Meela would know. He should message her.)

“Caleb’s trying to sleep, and you keep trying to wake him,” he warns her, which gets him a happy little giggle. He finds it difficult to stay mad at her, though, because she’s just so cute, all dark hair and bright eyes, and so he picks her up and rocks her gently. “And  _ you _ , Little Miss Human, need sleep too.”

The baby gurgles in response like he just said a funny joke, and tries to make a grab for his earring.

When they first found her on their doorstep, they messaged each of their friends, in hopes that one of them might have a clue where the mysterious infant came from. No one from the Nein knew, but Veth, who had the most experience with babies, brought them all the supplies they would need to take care of an infant.

“We aren’t keeping her,” they told the halfling, as she made her husband and oldest son carry a crib and a rocking chair into their home.

“Of course you aren’t,” she said, patting Caleb on the cheek like she didn’t quite believe them, and handed them a sack full of diapers which they, unknowingly,  _ desperately  _ needed.

The baby doesn’t have a name; to name her would mean they’d get attached, and if they got attached it would mean they would keep her, and that wasn’t a good idea. So they keep calling her “baby”, although in truth Essek had started calling her Deyla in private, where Caleb couldn’t hear, because he found the baby to be just as tricky and conniving as his older sister had been. 

She wasn’t being tricky now, though. Now she was being a perfect little angel, rocking peacefully in his arms, except for the fact that she was refusing to sleep.  He kept rocking her gently in hopes of luring her back to sleep. It hadn’t worked so far, but he had hope that it might some day.

Perhaps talking to her might work?

“Ha,” he whispers to her, brushing dark curls out of her face. “I  _ knew  _ your eyes were blue. Caleb tried to tell me they were gray, but I knew he was wrong,” he tells her, and the baby giggles, as if he’s said the funniest thing in the--

Were her ears  _ always  _ pointed?

“You’d make an excellent father,” Caleb says quietly from the door, startling him. He’s out of practice; before he met Caleb no one could surprise him so. To be startled as such as Shadowhand would have meant his demise. Now, his husband leans against the doorframe, his arms crossed as he watches Essek examine the baby.

“Uh huh,” the comment doesn’t even register to Essek; he’s too busy running his fingers along her ears, which are now as long and pointed as his own. “She wasn’t an elf yesterday, was she? No pointy ears?”

“No?” Caleb shakes his head, confused, walking towards them both. “Her ears were round, like mine. And her eyes were gray,” he repeats the argument they had earlier.

“Well, they are blue now, and her ears are pointy.” Caleb takes the baby from his arms, and examines her himself, like he can’t quite believe his own eyes.

Deyla reaches up and squeezes Caleb’s nose, honking it like it’s a toy to play with. When Essek looks back down at the baby, her nose is the same as Caleb’s, as natural on her face as if she were born with it.

Huh. Perhaps not a human child after all.

Caleb must notice, too, because he turns to look at Essek with concern. “Do you know of any species that can change shape like this?”

“Only one,” he shakes his head. “Changlings. Fey creatures, humanoids. I’ve never seen one in the flesh, though,” he leans over to Deyla and tickles her. “Deyla, can you make yourself look like me?”

The baby gurgles happily again, and her skin starts turning purple--the same shade as Essek’s. “Good girl!” He coos, taking the baby from Caleb’s arms. It’s odd, holding her as she is right now, all pointy ears and dark skin, but with Caleb’s nose and (he realizes) Caleb’s blue eyes. A hodgepodge of their features, but not in the way a real child would look, a mismatch and not a blend.

“Deyla?” Caleb repeats, disbelief in his voice, and oh, Essek is in trouble now. They both agreed not to name her! 

“Uh. Whoops.”

But his husband is smiling instead, looking at him and the baby softly. “I’ve been calling her Una, after my mother.”

“Poor baby,” he teases, bouncing her slightly. “We keep trying to name her after dead people.”

“So much for not getting attached, ja?”

“I see why she got left with us,” Essek shakes his head, holding a toy up to Deyla--Una-- _ baby _ and watching as she changed her hair to match it. “If her parents didn’t know anything about magic and suddenly had a baby that could shapeshift, I’d freak out, too.”

“If I didn’t know what to do with her, I’d take her to a magic school, where I know children can go to safely study magic.” Caleb brushes her hair, which is long and blonde like the doll’s now. “We’re lucky they didn’t drown her, or leave her to die in the woods.” 

He’s right, of course, but it’s still difficult to hear. “I suppose we can’t take her to the orphanage, then, like we planned.”

“She would be there forever,” Caleb sighs sadly, “No one would want her, just because she’s different. An orphanage is not a  _ home _ , Essek. You should hear how Fjord talked about the one he grew up in.”

It wasn’t an option, in other words. He bounces Deyla-Una-Baby again. “You think Veth wants a sixth kid?”

“I think she’s  _ ours _ , love,” Caleb leans forward, and kisses her forehead sweetly. The baby giggles happily, her hair changing from blonde to red. “I know we said we didn’t want kids, that our time together was short enough as-is, but I think--I think we  _ must  _ keep her, Essek. Give her a home, and a family.”

A family. Something they’d both had once, and lost, and were terrified of losing again.

He swallows the lump forming in his throat, and kisses the baby, who laughs at him sleeplessly as her hair changes from red to purple. “I suppose you need a name, if we are going to keep you,” he says quietly.

Caleb kisses him, wrapping Essek and Baby in his arms. “You don’t sound happy.”

“I am,” Essek hands the baby off to Caleb. “Really. I’m already attached to her, and if you tried to take her away I’d cry and it would get really ugly. I just,” he took a deep breath. “I was never concerned about  _ your  _ ability to be a good father, you know. It was always my own faults that concerned me.”

“Really? Essek…” Caleb shook his head. “I killed my own parents. What on Exandria makes you think I’m more qualified to be a parent than you?”

“One mistake in forty years? Forgivable,” he brushes his hand against Caleb’s forehead, where his short hair has started to turn slightly gray. “But Caleb, I was Shadowhand for twenty five. I did horrible things in the name of the Dynasty.”

“And I didn’t do horrible things for the Empire?  _ Holle,  _ I did horrible things when I was with the  _ Nein _ . For fun. We’re both flawed, my love. But you know what?” he leans forward, kissing Essek gently. “We’re in this  _ together _ . We’ll keep each other in check.” He bounces the baby on his hips, letting her giggle happily. “I don’t think either of us will let the other ruin this child.”

“You have a lot of faith.”

“In you? Endlessly.” He grabs Essek’s hand, squeezing it gently. “Come on now, it’s bedtime.”

He takes the baby, and Essek, and puts them both in the bed. “You want her to sleep with us?” Essek squeaks, as Caleb gently places the baby on the bed between them. “We’ll crush her!”

“We won’t,” Caleb says calmly. “We’ve never crushed Frumpkin, and he’s slept in our bed plenty of times.”

Essek wants to protest further, but he doesn’t get the chance to. Caleb has started humming, an old Zemnian song, and the baby has yawned, her eyes closed for the first time all evening. 

Essek falls asleep to the sound of his husband’s voice, gentle and low, and the sound of their daughter sleeping between them.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually like to think the changling baby showed up because the Traveler.
> 
> He just found a bunch of changlings and went "you know who's been super boring since they retired and stopped adventuring? The Mighty Nein." and so he dropped a shapeshifting baby off at each of their doorsteps (on different days, to avoid suspicion, of course) just to spread some chaos in the world.
> 
> Epilogue:  
> In the other households:
> 
> BeauJesterYasha: The Great Name Debate 2k20. Beau does not want to name this child Molly; her wives, unfortunately, do.
> 
> Fjorclay: The Wildmother Has Blessed Us With This Weird Pink Baby Thing, and We're Gonna Take Care of Him. (Fjord: "I've only had this weird baby for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him I'd kill everyone in the room and then myself.")
> 
> Nott and Yeza: Yeza looks up at his normal chaotic breakfast table, counts, and realizes there's an extra kid. "Honey, did we accidentally steal a baby?"
> 
> "What are you talking about?"
> 
> "Well, there are six kids here instead of five..."
> 
> "Dad, how could you possibly forget about my sister Stabber?" Teenage Luc, agent of Chaos, says, holding up a baby changling who is chewing on a fork. "She's been here the entire time! You mean you've *forgotten* Stabber?"
> 
> "Yeah," Luc's little sister says. "How could you forget Stabber, Dad?"
> 
> Veth and Yeza share a *look*, but Stabber stays.


End file.
